


At the End

by thundercracker



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Raven's Roost, Tres Horny Girls AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercracker/pseuds/thundercracker
Summary: The end of Julia's world comes on a dishearteningly average day.Raven's Roost is destroyed. Its hero survives.





	At the End

**Author's Note:**

> i'm publishing this at 6.30am after getting inspired at 4am and i just realised this is too sad. i didn't mean to make julia sadstuck but i might have. i already wrote a less sadstuck version of how this might work out in THG AU though, so there's that at least.

“Julia, dear? Do you have any thoughts on this piece?”

“Me?” laughed a young woman from across the room, one hand absently playing with a loop of her hair. “Dear, _darling_ father of mine, are you asking if _I_ have thoughts on something?”

The old man chortled—chortling was a good word for it, his daughter and son-in-law had agreed, teasing him affectionately months ago. “Fine, then, will you come give your opinion?”

“Oh, certainly!”

Julia Burnsides, one half of Raven’s Roost’s folk hero duo, quickly came to stand beside her father. She placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned in to examine the ornament he was in the process of sculpting. It was a lovely decoration, all curves and spirals centering in on a depiction of a shield above a flame, a combined depiction of the goddesses Estanna and Syreth for an elderly couple down the street.

It was a payment of sorts for the lovely bouquet, decorations, and food the two had provided in the recent Waxman-Burnsides wedding. Of course, that was in return for the cradle Magnus had made for the two women and their newly adopted addition to the family, which had been in thanks for the extremely gracious gifts from their garden’s first harvest—

The Hammer and Tongs, thankfully, was successful and supported enough by the local community to be able to continue their tradition of this back-and-forth with the Thundershields.

The ornament was, by most standards, exquisite. The common observer would say it was flawless.

“The angle of the shield is a bit off here, and the two top-right spirals aren’t curved enough, I think,” Julia said instead.

Steven Waxman sighed, his shoulders sagging in faked defeatism. “That’s what I feared. Right as always, gem.”

“It’s great, dad, I promise.” Julia patted her father’s arm in consolation and suppressed a chuckle. “It’s just not Waxman-perfect yet.”

“Speaking of Waxman-perfect, how is the writing with Jasmine going? Still chronicling history in the making?”

“I mean, it’s going?” the woman hummed as she returned to her spot at the writing desk to sort through a mess of papers. “I’ve been giving her our correspondences, journals, plans, and all that. But she keeps putting Maggie and me on a pedestal, still. ‘The heroes of Raven’s Roost!’” She swept her arms out theatrically and sighed.

“You _are_ , though. Face it, you and Magnus are legends.”

“We’re _figureheads_ for a revolution by the people.”

“The woman who wrote the speeches, the battle plans, the attempted treatise, and the man who was right there beside her at the forefront of the movement?” Steven was teasing her, she knew; they had been through this before, but the situation never sat well with her or Magnus. The women she had taught political theory to now looked at her as if she was a star in the sky—and Magnus did the same, of course, but that was different, Magnus treated her like another equal still. Magnus would still point out when she might get too stubborn about minutia, Magnus would still tickle her in the middle of what should be romantic moments, would still ration with her, would laugh at some immature joke of hers as he helped with her hair each morning, would call her _his_ hero. Not the hero of Raven’s Roost, but his, for her strength and bravery and knowledge and politics. For her being her.

There was a strange isolation in being a hero.

(Magnus felt it too; he had confided it to her late one night as they sat on their bed, her hands in his. He ran his fingers over hers, touched her nails, laced his fingers in hers, rubbed circles in her palms. She had calluses from helping Steven in the shop all her life, but her husband—he was her husband now! finally, finally, after all this time—insisted her hands were unbelievably smooth, like puppies or a calf or a baby, like young and sweet and amazing things, and it was during their most important conversations that he most liked to focus on them. Maybe it was stimming, though she'd never asked. 

He had told her that his friends at the tavern kept bringing it up, joking about getting his autograph. One actually asked for it. Everything was about how he was a hero now. And  _don't get me wrong_ , he had insisted, he _loved that,_ but what happening to just goofing around? He had sighed so long and hard that Julia decided they needed a fuck-it-it's-self-care night full of Labrador tea, soft blankets, and tender words. It was only at midnight that they fell asleep embracing each other.)

The bell on the door chimed as a young-looking elven woman swayed into the home of the Hammer and Tongs. She was from a corridor over, Julia recalled, and had sold her a lovely bone bracelet last week; she had been dabbling, she had said, expanding out from her usual market stock. Her name started with E and had meant—something; Julia and Magnus had learned both the Elvish words comprising it, which were fairly basic. Eilnis? That seemed right.

Eilnis cleared her throat upon seeing Julia and said in a naturally quiet, lilting voice, “I’m here to pick up a portrait frame?”

“Welcome,” Julia greeted as she rose from the desk and wandered to the display section of the shop for completed projects. “Magnus finished it the day before he left town.”

“Oh! Yes!” Eilnis said with a start. “He did mention a competition when I came here, I forgot.” Julia retrieved her picture frame; it was elegantly carved with forget-me-nots and baby’s breath; the elf stared at it breathlessly. “Wow, holy shit,” she giggled under her breath, “Lise is going to love this.” Louder, she added, “I mean, thank you. Um, what do I owe you? I—"

And then a thunderous _boom_ shook the world.

Julia took it in all at once: the sound of explosions, the sudden instability of the ground as it began to tilt unnaturally, the slow cracking of the building’s walls as it shifted as no house was meant to shift. The floorboards creaked in protest and snapped.

The sound crowded her mind.

It was so loud. It sounded like the first notes of a reprised war song.

The world was ending.

Her world was about to die.

_Her father_ was about to die.

“Get out! Get out, get out!” a voice was screaming, barely audible amidst the chaos. (It was hers.)

There was a blur in the corner of her eye—thank the gods that at least Eilnis was following her advice, considering that she herself was rushing to her father’s side, clutching him, giving him support as he climbed to his feet. The two shuffled toward the door. The world ended around them.

(This house had been Julia’s home since she was born. Raven’s Roost had been her home. Julia got the feeling that both those facts were about to be in the past tense. Funny, she expected the end of the world to have some sort of ominous prelude.)

The world shattered and fell, and all was black.

* * *

 

It was cliché but damn true that the first thing Julia registered was the pain.

She wasn’t in shock at the moment, so that was good. She blinked her eyes open. She would have thought she was in a nightmare or some kind of hell, but the pain unfortunately discredited both possibilities.

Maybe it would be best to process one thing at a time, Julia decided (much more reasonably than she felt). Firstly: most of the world was blocked from her vision. She could see out a gap in the rubble—no worries about running out of oxygen, thank the gods—but something was crushing her on all sides. Secondly: the Market Corridor loomed far above her. Thirdly: the thing on top of her was the roof of the Hammer and Tongs. Fourthly: she had no idea why, but someone bombed the support column. The Market Corridor was safe, so it was probably just the Craftsmen Corridor, but—how many people died? How many people were suffering under the ruins of their home? Would rescue come?

Julia cried out for help; the world was cruelly silent. There was no way to tell the time, but Julia felt that it had been at least a few hours. She had thought she was ready to die fighting for her town, and maybe so, but gods, not like this. Not so _pointlessly_ and _alone_.

Too soon, her consciousness was slipping. 

* * *

 

Against all odds, they found her.

So much of the town were preparing to flee or were in hiding, but they found her.

_But where’s my father?_ she thought frantically but

her voice wouldn’t choke past the tears ( _everything hurt_ but _she was alive, thank the gods_ )

and without the constant pressure of the roof and with the passage of time, she could tell that she couldn’t move her right leg. Nothing during the whole revolution had felt like the mosaic of fire and numbness in her body.

A dwarven cleric pulled her from the wreckage but made no move to heal her. _Spell slots_ , Julia figured. _There are (were) over 80 people in the Craftsmen Corridor._

Much later, she saw Steven and wished she hadn’t.

His body wouldn’t be fit for an open-casket viewing, even if she thought for a moment that the time would have the resources for so many funerals.

Eilnis was sobbing by his side.

Julia wept as never before.

And the new post-Raven’s Roost world began. 

* * *

 

(It was a month before Julia could leave, between mourning and the cleric’s treatments. She’d have a permanent limp once she could walk again, but—gods, someone had to remember her father. In the days she was prescribed rest, she wrote and rewrote eulogies, biographies, stories and jokes, little moments in their workshop. None of them were good enough.

It was two months before she was forced to leave. She was eternally grateful to Eilnis and her partner for staying so long; the food supplies were dwindling, and the hay for their mules was nearly out. They left in a southbound wagon with all they could salvage of value.

Magnus would have been back a month ago if he could have come back at all.

She was going to find out what happened.)

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes things aren't chekhov's guns. sometimes they're just little things you remember about the day everything went to hell.


End file.
